Saturday, October 16, 2010

Nightmare is Over

The Chief Marketing Officer was terminated. After three demotions and doing nothing but making my life miserable for FIVE years my nightmare is over.

Thirty days ago, I was reviewing the numbers with my CFO, I found that we were missing about 100K in revenue. When I questioned him about it, I found out that the CMO received ALL of it.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT THE FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUK????

For the past two years, I lived on a plane servicing these crazy ass clients. Words can not capture, the various in flight scenarios and endless hours spent going to, being and leaving airports.

To compound the problem, all of my time and expenses came out of my bottom line.

Oh it gets better.....

My financial Einstein gave me some bullshit reason as to why they did it and suggested that I work it out with the CMO. I reminded him that THEY didn't bother to discuss this nice little arrangement with me when he stole the money.

Slightly aggravated, he that there was nothing he could do about and take it up with Corporate.

Game On.

I immediately called my boss of the hour and explained the situation. The next thing I knew, I had the President on the phone. He quickly reminded me that he tried to take this gentleman out but was protected by boss number four.

Yeah I know. "What impact would his departure have with your clients?" he asked.

Tersely, the same impact you would have....

There was silence.....(At this point, I really didn't give a rat's behind about my tone).

Then he started laughing.

He promised to resolve the situation.

Before I could call the financial Einstein, my boss was on the phone to him demanding an explanation of why he handed over all of this revenue.

Ten minutes later....

FE was on the phone. "Wow, remind me not to piss you off, I just hung from your boss, I can't believe you called him."

Still beyond pissed, I gave him an earful and informed him that I also spoke with the President and I don't mean Obama.

" I wonder if I'm going to be forced to retire because of this?" he said softly.

Having had the shits of the grumpy old guys club, I was not very sympathetic.

You know dear, I have spent my entire career here, cleaning the mess you boys created. Enough already...

With that, I hung up and went into action.

I called the team together, reminded them that none of us worked for the CMO and any further requests from him to be ignored. I deactivated his pass key and told them that if actually showed up in our office to call me first. If I wasn't there call the local police and have him escorted from the building.

I thought about calling him or sending him an e-mail but then why bother.

He prided himself in being a feelingless Zombie. "You know I scored 5 on the Myers Briggs test in the emotional section," he would remind me.

The fact that because of this drain and additional theft of revenue, crippled our numbers and the folks who actually serviced our clients would not see a raise any time soon; would not bother him in the least. My team needed to work. He was sticking around for so that he could establish a legacy. Yeah, sounds like Bush. A history of tone deafness and failure.

To compound the problem, he rails against entitlements, but somehow because he was a card carrying member of the old boys club he was entitled to six figure income.

Brutal.

So what's a girl to do?

I did the one thing that I knew would make him crazy.......

I ignored him.

I did not return calls or emails. When he called around to other employees, they recognized his number and with absolute glee, they ignored him to.

One day he called from a different number and got my receptionist. He asked her to go get me.

She did as requested.

She interrupted a meeting.

"CMO is on the phone, he said he would hold for you," she advised.

I told her look, I am busy but this is not your war. You can tell him the truth, I'm busy and I will always be busy. Or you can just hang up.

She smiled and opted to be nice, she informed him that I was in a meeting.

He said I think she is ignoring me. She said nothing.

It took two weeks and the drawing of straws to determine, who was actually going to do the deed.

My boss called and asked how often does he come into my office. Ah never. What about the DC office? Less than never. What does he do all day? clearly befuddled.

Really? I responded do we really want to travel down that path?

For the first time in months the team of DC saw the CMO who just assumed that he there to discuss the 2011 budget.

The arrogant bastard was actually surprised. And had the temerity to question his severance. He was expecting 50% of his pay for two years. Well that package is for real producers. I guess he did not read the provision of revenue "initiated".

We are preparing the division for another sale, and they will probably throw some more money at him to avoid a suit.

A painful chapter of my life is drawing to a close. I am so ready to move on. If I can save some jobs in the sale, I will be thrilled. If not, I no longer care.

When I shared this story with my massage therapist, he just assumed he would see an immediate loss in revenue....

1 comment:

Trakker
said...

Knowing almost nothing about what you've been through, your anger and your evident relief in this post assure me that life just got a lot better for you. Great! Now if the Phillies can just knock off the Giants...

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About Me

Much has been said about Sally. Romantics assume that she was in love with Jefferson. Others such as yours truly believe that she did what she had to do to survive in a tough situation and to protect her children. As a minority female executive, I have put up with a lot of crap in order to survive and take care of my family.